The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) is the United States' largest philanthropy focused solely on health; it is based in Princeton, New Jersey. The foundation's goal, through the use of grants, is "to improve the health and health care of all Americans."
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit watchdog and consumer advocacy group that advocates for safer and healthier foods.
Michael F. Jacobson, who holds a Ph.D. in microbiology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is an American scientist and nutrition advocate.
Food policy is the area of public policy concerning how food is produced, processed, distributed, purchased, or provided. Food policies are designed to influence the operation of the food and agriculture system balanced with ensuring human health needs. This often includes decision-making around production and processing techniques, marketing, availability, utilization, and consumption of food, in the interest of meeting or furthering social objectives. Food policy can be promulgated on any level, from local to global, and by a government agency, business, or organization. Food policymakers engage in activities such as regulation of food-related industries, establishing eligibility standards for food assistance programs for the poor, ensuring safety of the food supply, food labeling, and even the qualifications of a product to be considered organic.
Food politics is a term which encompasses not only food policy and legislation, but all aspects of the production, control, regulation, inspection, distribution and consumption of commercially grown, and even sometimes home grown, food. The commercial aspects of food production are affected by ethical, cultural, and health concerns, as well as environmental concerns about farming and agricultural practices and retailing methods. The term also encompasses biofuels, GMO crops and pesticide use, the international food market, food aid, food security and food sovereignty, obesity, labor practices and immigrant workers, issues of water usage, animal cruelty, and climate change.
Kelly David Brownell is a clinical psychologist and scholar of public health and public policy at Duke University whose work focuses on obesity and food policy. He is a former dean of Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy. Noted for his research dealing primarily with obesity prevention, as well as the intersection of behavior, environment, and health with public policy, Brownell advised former First Lady Michelle Obama's initiatives to address childhood obesity and has testified before Congress. He is credited with coining the term "yo-yo dieting", and was named as one of "The World's 100 Most Influential People" by Time Magazine in 2006.
The Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity is a non-profit research and public policy organization devoted to improving the world’s diet, preventing obesity, and reducing weight stigma and weight bias. Located in Hartford, Connecticut at The University of Connecticut, the Rudd Center was co-founded in March 2005 at Yale University by benefactor Leslie Rudd and Kelly D. Brownell. The Rudd Center moved from Yale to the University of Connecticut in December 2014.
A fat tax is a tax or surcharge that is placed upon fattening food, beverages or on overweight individuals. It is considered an example of Pigovian taxation. A fat tax aims to discourage unhealthy diets and offset the economic costs of obesity.
A food environment is the "physical presence of food that affects a person’s diet, a person’s proximity to food store locations, the distribution of food stores, food service, and any physical entity by which food may be obtained, or a connected system that allows access to food".
David George Gratzer is a physician, columnist, author, Congressional expert witness; he was a senior fellow at both the Manhattan Institute and the Montreal Economic Institute. Though he has written essays on topics as diverse as obesity and political campaigns, he is best known for his first book, published by ECW Press, when he was just 24: Code Blue: Reviving Canada's Health Care System. That book won the Donner Prize established by the Donner Canadian Foundation and was a national bestseller in his native Canada. Gratzer is a critic of the Canadian health care system, and of U.S. President Barack Obama's health care reform proposals. Gratzer was health care policy advisor to Rudy Giuliani's 2008 presidential campaign.
Obesity in Mexico is a relatively recent phenomenon, having been widespread since the 1980s with the introduction of processed food into much of the Mexican food market. Prior to that, dietary issues were limited to under and malnutrition, which is still a problem in various parts of the country. Following trends already ongoing in other parts of the world, Mexicans have been foregoing traditional whole grains and vegetables in favor of a diet with more animal products and processed foods. It has seen dietary energy intake and rates of overweight and obese people rise with seven out of ten at least overweight and a third clinically obese.
Obesity in the United Kingdom is a significant contemporary health concern, with authorities stating that it is one of the leading preventable causes of death. In February 2016, former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt described rising rates of childhood obesity as a "national emergency".
A sugary drink tax, soda tax, or sweetened beverage tax (SBT) is a tax or surcharge designed to reduce consumption of drinks with added sugar. Drinks covered under a soda tax often include carbonated soft drinks, sports drinks and energy drinks. This policy intervention is an effort to decrease obesity and the health impacts related to being overweight, however the medical evidence supporting the benefits of a sugar tax on health is of very low certainty. The tax is a matter of public debate in many countries and beverage producers like Coca-Cola or Dr Pepper often oppose it. Advocates such as national medical associations and the World Health Organization promote the tax as an example of Pigovian taxation, aimed to discourage unhealthy diets and offset the growing economic costs of obesity.
Based in Washington, D.C., Leadership for Healthy Communities is a $10-million national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation designed to engage and support local and state government leaders nationwide in their efforts to advance public policies that support healthier communities and prevent childhood obesity. The program places an emphasis on policies with the greatest potential for increasing sustainable opportunities for physical activity and healthy eating among children at highest risk for obesity, including African-American, Latino, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian-American and Pacific Islander children living in lower-income communities. The foundation's primary goal is the reversal of the childhood obesity epidemic by 2015.
The healthcare reform debate in the United States has been a political issue focusing upon increasing medical coverage, decreasing costs, insurance reform, and the philosophy of its provision, funding, and government involvement.
Criticism of fast food includes claims of negative health effects, animal cruelty, cases of worker exploitation, children targeted marketing and claims of cultural degradation via shifts in people's eating patterns away from traditional foods. Fast food chains have come under fire from consumer groups, such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a longtime fast food critic over issues such as caloric content, trans fats and portion sizes. Social scientists have highlighted how the prominence of fast food narratives in popular urban legends suggests that modern consumers have an ambivalent relationship with fast food, particularly in relation to children.
The National Policy and Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity, or NPLAN for short, is a nonprofit organization funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and which, according to its website, plays an important role in the Foundation's effort to reverse the obesity epidemic by 2015, a commitment that was announced in 2007. Their partners include, in addition to the RWJF, Active Living by Design and the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale. They are run by ChangeLab Solutions, originally known as Public Health Law and Policy, which focuses not only on obesity but also on tobacco regulation. The NPLAN advocates for a soda tax, specifically an excise tax, and have published model legislation which earmarks the funds raised to go to programs to prevent and treat obesity. According to the American Public Health Association, they provide "legal technical assistance focused on childhood obesity prevention policy." The Network has also "developed model menu labeling ordinances, requiring chain restaurants to post calorie and other nutrition information on menus." NPLAN has advocated for the use of licensing and zoning laws to "shape the way land is used and how businesses operate," and has praised regulations requiring nutrition standards on foods sold in snack machines in schools. According to their website, they "work on four broad issue areas: healthy community food systems, healthy schools, healthy land use planning, and food marketing." The American Bar Association's director of public health and policy Marice Ashe wrote the following soon after the NPLAN's founding was announced: "NPLAN will serve as an incubator where lawyers, policymakers, advocates, and scientists collaborate to produce legal and policy tools and resources. As research and products are developed, NPLAN will also operate as a national one-stop source for access to practical, efficient, and effective legal technical assistance products."
Citizens for Health is a U.S. non-profit organization which advocates on issues affecting nutrition, obesity, dietary supplements, food labeling and other health matters.
Obesity and the environment aims to look at the different environmental factors that have been determined by researchers to cause and perpetuate obesity. In 1994 in the United States, the percentage of the adult population that was obese was much lower than it is today. In 1994 the percentage of the population in every state that was obese was less than 20%, but by 2008, only one state still had a percentage obese below 20%, six states had a percentage obese of more than 30% while the rest of the states ranged between 20% and 30%. In 2016, the number of obese people reached an all-time high of about 93 million, which was up 33 percent from 2008 according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC). This may be even more concerning for children and teens who have seen their rate of obesity go up to 18.5%, which is triple the rate in 1980. If current trends continue, as many as 57% of them will end up obese by the time, they reach the age of 35. This will put them at higher risk for other health conditions such as, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. In response, both federal and local officials have instituted policies to combat obesity as well as promote healthy eating, such as: The Farm Bill, National School Lunch Act and Child Nutrition Act, as well as The Healthy Kid Act.
The Food Justice Movement is a grassroots initiative emerging from communities in response to food insecurity and economic pressures that prevent access to healthy, nutritious, and culturally appropriate foods. It includes more broad policy movements, such as the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. Food justice recognizes the food system as "a racial project and problematizes the influence of race and class on the production, distribution and consumption of food". This encompasses farm labor work, land disputes, issues of status and class, environmental justice, public politics, and advocacy. Food justice is closely connected to food sovereignty, which critiques "structural barriers communities of color face to accessing local and organic foods" that are largely due to institutional racism and the effect it has on economic equality. It is argued that lack of access to good food is both a cause and a symptom of the structural inequalities that divide society. A possible solution presented for poor areas includes community gardens, fairness for food workers, and a national food policy.
